Gaming and Education

thegongshow:

Speaking about gaming in general, to play a video games is to make many small decisions in a short window of time and instantly get feedback on those decisions.  In that respect I think gaming helped my analytical skills in the long run, and it definitely helped my sense of exploration… I’m willing to make a decision without full knowledge, and then iterate quickly based on the result of that decision.

Gaming (board games, video games, card games, etc.) has provided me with a lot of value, understanding rule frameworks & probabilities, fostering a competitive spirit, encouraging exploration, driving a sense of perseverance (back when games where hard…). Ultimately, computer games piqued my interest in programming, which guided my college choice, and so on. 

And so, I feel strongly that educators, parents, and game-makers should agree that games are an opportunity.

Theme, story & features can draw gamers in, and once hooked, they’ll learn to solve any puzzle, or memorize any answer to make forward progress, so long as the game upholds the experience. If we take the time to craft those experiences to teach the important lessons, we’ll have a better educated and interested youth.

If we slap together “edutainment” and simply call it a “game”, we turn that same youth off from learning.

My grandfather was a voracious consumer & collector of books. “Food for the mind,” he’d say. I’m lucky to share his value system.

The size of a serious collector’s library after 70 years of adult acquisition is unfathomable. I’d estimate he had over 6,000 books in his possession when he passed this spring.

Today over 6 hours, my parents & I catalogued 600 of those books (using an iPhone w/ Red Laser, an iPad for collecting un-scannable ISBNs, Delicious Library 2, and a little AppleScript to grease the process)

I do believe ‘liquidity is the new luxury’, and after moving hundreds of pounds of books, I’m glad my reading habit’s total burden is the weight of an iPad.

One thing that shocked me though: of the 600 books from decades of collecting, total retail value at purchase was $9,000. Total ‘current value’ as estimated by Amazon’s used book market? About $9,000.

While we’ll likely donate most of the books, I was surprised the numbers worked out so closely. 

The Creativity Crisis

infoneer-pulse:

roomthily:

Overwhelmed by curriculum standards, American teachers warn there’s no room in the day for a creativity class. Kids are fortunate if they get an art class once or twice a week. But to scientists, this is a non sequitur, borne out of what University of Georgia’s Mark Runco calls “art bias.” The age-old belief that the arts have a special claim to creativity is unfounded. When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. Inside their brains, the same thing was happening—ideas were being generated and evaluated on the fly.

via Newsweek

(Emphasis mine)

This is an important point, and related to the title of this blog (Restriction is Expression)

Creativity and problem-solving are largely synonymous. The better trained and resourceful the mind is, the faster & better it can solve constraints, whether the constraints are the laws of the universe, or the properties of a physical medium.

It’s a copout to think creativity is best developed in the art-room; every discipline can be taught in such a way to foster “better thinking”. If not, why are we teaching it at all?

Revisiting Cialdini’s 6 Principles of Influence

performableblog:

A great resource over at Online Marketing News: An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion

If you’ve never read Robert Cialdini’s Influence, you should run to a book store, buy it, and read it all immediately. Cialdini provides an excellent overview of persuasive principles that drive human behavior that are widely applicable to almost any situation.
The principles of influence are:

1. Reciprocation: Doing a favor for someone often gets you a favor in return.
2. Commitment & Consistency: People hold an ideal of staying consistent with their behavior.
3. Social Proof: People look to others when they’re not sure how to act themselves.
4. Liking: People do business with others they know, like, and trust.
5. Authority: People defer to others in authority when making decisions.
6. Scarcity: People don’t like to miss out on something valuable and scarce

These principles have been covered in-depth in many places, but this handy guide goes a bit further and applies them to web marketing. While the author’s applications are high-level, they can be a good introduction to the concepts and get you started about thinking how they might apply to your specific marketing situation. 
via An Illustrated Guide to the Science of Influence & Persuasion | Online Marketing News

Cialdini book is fascinating and immediately actionable, highly recommended. 

The Cleverest Little Feature - Copy & Paste (with a surprise)

I was just reading an article on Business Insider’s website, and wanted to share an excerpt with a friend. Eschewing the share-tools, I did what was most natural, selected text on the page, hit ‘copy’ and pasted it into an email.

Something really special happened when I hit paste (quoted as follows):

Why? Because as Lee explains, the “check-in” is going to be a commodity in a matter of months — everyone will have a “check-in” feature, ranging from the likes of Foursquare to Facebook and Google. It’s what happens after the check-in that is going to be valuable, Lee says, and he and Booyah plan to use location data specifically to make games.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/booyah-foursquare-rival-raises-huge-20-million-round-from-accel-2010-5#ixzz0oBj9WfkQ

That “Read more” link most certainly isn’t at that location in the article, but provides tons of value for my copy-paste sharing via email.

I have no idea if this invention started with them, but it’s the first I’ve seen it. Kudos to BI for augmenting (and tracking) the “dark matter” of article sharing.

Startup Lesson: Unfair, Initial Compensation

benwills:

In the beginning, if you’re not unfairly compensated - if you’re not giving more than you’re receiving - your business will die.

There are too many lessons to learn from your initial customers that, if you don’t overly-support them, if you don’t spend an extra few minutes on each support call getting a little more information, if you don’t spend extra time communicating your gratitude for working together, if you don’t spend extra time behind the scenes helping them out….you’re losing, forever, the most valuable information your business could receive.

In the beginning, some of your largest - if not, *the* largest - expenses should be the time cost of customer support.